Chapter M (2)

~Plagiarism.~--Nothing is sillier than this charge of plagiarism. There is no sixth commandment in art. The poet dare help himself wherever he lists--wherever he finds material suited to his work. He may even appropriate entire columns with their carved capitals, if the temple he thus supports be a beautiful one. Goethe understood this very well, and so did Shakespeare before him.--_Heinrich Heine._

~Pleasure.~--Consider pleasures as they depart, not as they come.--_Aristotle._

We have not an hour of life in which our pleasures relish not some pain, our sours some sweetness.--_Massinger._

How many there are that take pleasure in toil: that can outrise the sun, outwatch the moon, and outrun the field's wild beasts! merely out of fancy and delectation, they can find out mirth in vociferation, music in the barking of dogs, and be content to be led about the earth, over hedges and through sloughs, by the windings and the shifts of poor affrighted vermin; yet, after all, come off, as Messalina, tired, and not satisfied with all that the brutes can do. But were a man enjoined to this that did not like it, how tedious and how punishable to him would it prove! since, in itself, it differs not from riding post.--_Feltham._

Boys immature in knowledge pawn their experience to their present pleasure.--_Shakespeare._

'Tis a wrong way to proportion other men's pleasures to ourselves. 'Tis like a child's using a little bird--"Oh, poor bird, thou shalt sleep with me"--so lays it in his bosom and stifles it with his hot breath. The bird had rather be in the cold air. And yet, too, 'tis the most pleasing flattery to like what other men like.--_Selden._

There is no pleasure but that some pain is nearly allied to it.--_Menander._

All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor; 'tis like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.--_Swift._

Fly the pleasure that bites to-morrow.--_George Herbert._

Look upon pleasures not upon that side that is next the sun, or where they look beauteously, that is, as they come towards you to be enjoyed, for then they paint and smile, and dress themselves up in tinsel, and glass gems, and counterfeit imagery.--_Jeremy Taylor._

Pleasure has its time; so, too, has wisdom. Make love in thy youth, and in old age attend to thy salvation.--_Voltaire._

A man of pleasure is a man of pains.--_Young._

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.--_Johnson._

What would we not give to still have in store the first blissful moment we ever enjoyed!--_Rochepedre._

Most pleasures embrace us but to strangle.--_Montaigne._

~Poetry.~--Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.--_Madame de Stael._

Poetry is the sister of sorrow. Every man that suffers and weeps is a poet; every tear is a verse, and every heart a poem.--_Marc Andre._

Much is the force of heaven-bred poesy.--_Shakespeare._

Poetry, good sir, in my opinion, is like a tender virgin, very young, and extremely beautiful, whom divers other virgins--namely, all the other sciences--make it their business to enrich, polish, and adorn; and to her it belongs to make use of them all, and on her part to give a lustre to them all.--_Cervantes._

Poetry is the overflowing of the soul.--_Tuckerman._

Poetry is enthusiasm with wings of fire, it is the angel of high thoughts, that inspires us with the power of sacrifice.--_Mazzini._

Poetry is the music of thought, conveyed to us in the music of language.--_Chatfield._

The great secret of morals is love, or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another, and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is imagination, and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause.--_Shelley._

Truth shines the brighter clad in verse.--_Pope._

It is a shallow criticism that would define poetry as confined to literary productions in rhyme and metre. The written poem is only poetry _talking_, and the statue, the picture, and the musical composition are poetry _acting_. Milton and Goethe, at their desks, were not more truly poets than Phidias with his chisel, Raphael at his easel, or deaf Beethoven bending over his piano, inventing and producing strains which he himself could never hope to hear.--_Ruskin._

Thought in blossom.--_Bishop Ken._

It is a ruinous misjudgment, too contemptible to be asserted, but not too contemptible to be acted upon, that the end of poetry is publication.--_George MacDonald._

Wisdom married to immortal verse.--_Wordsworth._

By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination; the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colors.--_Macaulay._

Thoughts, that voluntary move harmonious numbers.--_Milton._

The world is so grand and so inexhaustible that subjects for poems should never be wanted. But all poetry should be the poetry of circumstance; that is, it should be inspired by the Real. A particular subject will take a poetic and general character precisely because it is created by a poet. All my poetry is the poetry of circumstance. It wholly owes its birth to the realities of life.--_Goethe._

Nothing which does not transport is poetry. The lyre is a winged instrument.--_Joubert._

Perhaps there are no warmer lovers of the muse than those who are only permitted occasionally to gain her favors. The shrine is more reverently approached by the pilgrim from afar than the familiar worshiper. Poetry is often more beloved by one whose daily vocation is amid the bustle of the world. We read of a fountain in Arabia upon whose basin is inscribed, "Drink and away;" but how delicious is that hasty draught, and how long and brightly the thought of its transient refreshment dwells in the memory!--_Tuckerman._

Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good.--_Izaak Walton._

Poetry is not made out of the understanding. The question of common sense is always: "What is it good for?" a question which would abolish the rose and be triumphantly answered by the cabbage.--_Lowell._

The poetry of earth is never dead.--_Keats._

~Poets.~--Poets, like race-horses, must be fed, not fattened.--_Charles IX._

True poets, like great artists, have scarcely any childhood, and no old age.--_Madame Swetchine._

Modern poets mix much water with their ink.--_Goethe._

There is nothing of which Nature has been more bountiful than poets. They swarm like the spawn of cod-fish, with a vicious fecundity, that invites and requires destruction. To publish verses is become a sort of evidence that a man wants sense; which is repelled not by writing good verses, but by writing excellent verses.--_Sydney Smith._

There is a pleasure in poetic pains which only poets know.--_Wordsworth._

An artist that works in marble or colors has them all to himself and his tribe, but the man who moulds his thoughts in verse has to employ the materials vulgarized by everybody's use, and glorify them by his handling.--_Holmes._

A little shallowness might be useful to many a poet! What is depth, after all? Is the pit deeper than the shallow mirror which reflects its lowest recesses?--_Heinrich Heine._

We praise the dramatic poet who possesses the art of drawing tears--a talent which he has in common with the meanest onion!--_Heinrich Heine._

I have observed a gardener cut the outward rind of a tree (which is the surtout of it), to make it bear well: and this is a natural account of the usual poverty of poets, and is an argument why wits, of all men living, ought to be ill clad. I have always a sacred veneration for any one I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher; because the richest minerals are ever found under the most ragged and withered surfaces of the earth.--_Swift._

Words become luminous when the poet's finger has passed over them its phosphorescence.--_Joubert._

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.--_Shelley._

Poets are far rarer births than kings.--_Ben Jonson._

One might discover schools of the poets as distinctly as schools of the painters, by much converse in them, and a thorough taste of their manner of writing.--_Pope._

They learn in suffering what they teach in song.--_Shelley._

~Policy.~--He has mastered all points who has combined the useful with the agreeable.--_Horace._

At court one becomes a sort of human ant-eater, and learns to catch one's prey by one's tongue.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Measures, not men, have always been my mark.--_Goldsmith._

In a troubled state, we must do as in foul weather upon a river, not think to cut directly through, for the boat may be filled with water; but rise and fall as the waves do, and give way as much as we conveniently can.--_Seldon._

To manage men one ought to have a sharp mind in a velvet sheath.--_George Eliot._

~Politeness.~--Politeness is fictitious benevolence. It supplies the place of it among those who see each other only in public, or but little. Depend upon it, the want of it never fails to produce something disagreeable to one or other. I have always applied to good breeding what Addison, in his "Cato," says of honor: "Honor's a sacred tie: the law of kings; the noble mind's distinguishing perfection; that aids and strengthens Virtue where it meets her, and imitates her actions where she is not."--_Johnson._

Self-command is the main elegance.--_Emerson._

Politeness smooths wrinkles.--_Joubert._

Politeness is as natural to delicate natures as perfume is to flowers.--_De Finod._

~Politics.~--It is the misfortune of all miscellaneous political combinations, that with the purest motives of their more generous members are ever mixed the most sordid interests and the fiercest passions of mean confederates.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong.--_Daniel O'Connell._

Those who think must govern those who toil.--_Goldsmith._

The man who can make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, grow on the spot where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and render more essential service to the country, than the whole race of politicians put together.--_Swift._

Jarring interests of themselves create the according music of a well-mixed state.--_Pope._

Wise men and gods are on the strongest side.--_Sir C. Sedley._

The thorough-paced politician must laugh at the squeamishness of his conscience, and read it another lecture.--_South._

A thousand years scarce serve to form a state; an hour may lay it in the dust.--_Byron._

Extended empire, like extended gold, exchanges solid strength for feeble splendor.--_Johnson._

~Possessions.~--It so falls out that what we have we prize not to the worth whiles we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost, why then we rack the value; then we find the virtue that possession would not show us whiles it was ours.--_Shakespeare._

All comes from and will go to others.--_George Herbert._

In life, as in chess, one's own pawns block one's way. A man's very wealth, ease, leisure, children, books, which should help him to win, more often checkmate him.--_Charles Buxton._

In all worldly things that a man pursues with the greatest eagerness and intention of mind imaginable, he finds not half the pleasure in the actual possession of them as he proposed to himself in the expectation.--_South._

As soon as women become ours we are no longer theirs.--_Montaigne._

Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust. The malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may apply to every other course of life,--that its two days of happiness are the first and the last.--_Johnson._

~Posterity.~--Posterity preserves only what will pack into small compass. Jewels are handed down from age to age, less portable valuables disappear.--_Lord Stanley._

The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.--_Colton._

~Poverty.~--Many good qualities are not sufficient to balance a single want--the want of money.--_Zimmerman._

Few save the poor feel for the poor.--_L. E. Landon._

Thou shalt know by experience how salt the savor is of others' bread, and how sad a path it is to climb and descend another's stairs.--_Dante._

Riches endless is as poor as winter, to him that ever fears he shall be poor.--_Shakespeare._

A poor man resembles a fiddler, whose music, though liked, is not much praised, because he lives by it; while a gentleman performer, though the most wretched scraper alive, throws the audience into raptures.--_Goldsmith._

He is not poor that little hath, but he that much desires.--_Daniel._

The wicked man's tempter, the good man's perdition, the proud man's curse, the melancholy man's halter.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Power.~--The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something. The strongest, by dispensing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar, and leaves no trace behind.--_Carlyle._

Oh for a forty parson power.--_Byron._

Power is so characteristically calm, that calmness in itself has the aspect of power, and forbearance implies strength. The orator who is known to have at his command all the weapons of invective is most formidable when most courteous.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Praise.~--Expect not praise without envy until you are dead. Honors bestowed on the illustrious dead have in them no admixture of envy; for the living pity the dead; and pity and envy, like oil and vinegar, assimilate not.--_Colton._

Praise is the best diet for us after all.--_Sydney Smith._

Desert being the essential condition of praise, there can be no reality in the one without the other.--_Washington Allston._

Damn with faint praise.--_Pope._

Counsel is not so sacred a thing as praise, since the former is only useful among men, but the latter is for the most part reserved for the gods.--_Pythagoras._

Praise undeserved is satire in disguise.--_Broadhurst._

One good deed, dying tongueless, slaughters a thousand waiting upon that. Our praises are our wages.--_Shakespeare._

~Prayer.~--The Lord's Prayer contains the sum total of religion and morals.--_Wellington._

Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered.--_Shakespeare._

'Tis heaven alone that is given away; 'tis only God may be had for the asking.--_Lowell._

Let our prayers, like the ancient sacrifices, ascend morning and evening. Let our days begin and end with God.--_Channing._

The few that pray at all pray oft amiss.--_Cowper._

Such words as Heaven alone is fit to hear.--_Dryden._

What are men better than sheep or goats, that nourish a blind life within the brain, if, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer both for themselves and those who call them friends!--_Tennyson._

Prayer ardent opens heaven.--_Young._

Solicitude is the audience-chamber of God.--_Landor._

The best answer to all objections urged against prayer is the fact that man cannot help praying; for we may be sure that that which is so spontaneous and ineradicable in human nature has its fitting objects and methods in the arrangements of a boundless Providence.--_Chapin._

He prayeth best who loveth best.--_Coleridge._

~Preaching.~--Preachers say, do as I say, not as I do. But if a physician had the same disease upon him that I have, and he should bid me do one thing and he do quite another, could I believe him?--~Selden.~

~Preface.~--Your opening promises some great design.--_Horace._

A preface, being the entrance of a book, should invite by its beauty. An elegant porch announces the splendor of the interior.--_Disraeli._

A good preface is as essential to put the reader into good humor, as a good prologue is to a play, or a fine symphony is to an opera, containing something analogous to the work itself; so that we may feel its want as a desire not elsewhere to be gratified. The Italians call the preface--La salsa del libro--the sauce of the book; and, if well-seasoned, it creates an appetite in the reader to devour the book itself.--_Disraeli._

~Prejudice.~--He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.--_J. Stuart Mill._

Prejudice, which sees what it pleases, cannot see what is plain.--_Aubrey de Vere._

All looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.--_Pope._

Prejudice is the reason of fools.--_Voltaire._

Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.--_Diderot._

~Present, The.~--Since Time is not a person we can overtake when he is gone, let us honor him with mirth and cheerfulness of heart while he is passing.--_Goethe._

Man, living, feeling man, is the easy sport of the over-mastering present.--_Schiller._

'Tis but a short journey across the isthmus of Now.--_Bovee._

The present hour is always wealthiest when it is poorer than the future ones, as that is the pleasantest site which affords the pleasantest prospect.--_Thoreau._

Let us enjoy the fugitive hour. Man has no harbor, time has no shore, it rushes on and carries us with it.--_Lamartine._

~Presentiment.~--We walk in the midst of secrets--we are encompassed with mysteries. We know not what takes place in the atmosphere that surrounds us--we know not what relations it has with our minds. But one thing is sure, that, under certain conditions, our soul, through the exercise of mysterious functions, has a greater power than reason, and that the power is given it to antedate the future,--ay, to see into the future.--_Goethe._

We should not neglect a presentiment. Every man has within him a spark of divine radiance which is often the torch which illumines the darkness of our future.--_Madame de Girardin._

~Press.~--The press is not only free, it is powerful. That power is ours. It is the proudest that man can enjoy. It was not granted by monarchs, it was not gained for us by aristocracies; but it sprang from the people, and, with an immortal instinct, it has always worked for the people.--_B. Disraeli._

~Presumption.~--Presumption is our natural and original disease.--_Montaigne._

Presumption never stops in its first attempt. If Caesar comes once to pass the Rubicon, he will be sure to march further on, even till he enters the very bowels of Rome, and breaks open the Capitol itself. He that wades so far as to wet and foul himself, cares not how much he trashes further.--_South._

He that presumes steps into the throne of God.--_South._

~Pretence.~--As a general rule, people who flagrantly pretend to anything are the reverse of that which they pretend to. A man who sets up for a saint is sure to be a sinner, and a man who boasts that he is a sinner is sure to have some feeble, maudlin, sniveling bit of saintship about him which is enough to make him a humbug.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Pretension.~--Pretences go a great way with men that take fair words and magisterial looks for current payment.--_L'Estrange._

~Pride.~--I have been more and more convinced, the more I think of it, that in general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes. All the other passions do occasional good; but whenever pride puts in _its_ word, everything goes wrong; and what it might really be desirable to do, quietly and innocently, it is mortally dangerous to do proudly.--_Ruskin._

Pride's chickens have bonny feathers, but they are an expensive brood to rear--they eat up everything, and are always lean when brought to market.--_Alexander Smith._

When pride thaws look for floods.--_Bailey._

Pride, like laudanum and other poisonous medicines, is beneficial in small, though injurious in large, quantities. No man who is not pleased with himself, even in a personal sense, can please others.--_Frederick Saunders._

Pride is seldom delicate; it will please itself with very mean advantages.--_Johnson._

~Principles.~--Principle is a passion for truth.--_Hazlitt._

Principles, like troops of the line, are undisturbed, and stand fast.--_Richter._

Whatever lies beyond the limits of experience, and claims another origin than that of induction and deduction from established data, is illegitimate.--_G. H. Lewes._

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.--_Emerson._

What is the essence and the life of character? Principle, integrity, independence, or, as one of our great old writers has it, "that inbred loyalty unto virtue which can serve her without a livery."--_Bulwer-Lytton._

The change we personally experience from time to time we obstinately deny to our principles.--_Zimmerman._

~Printing.~--Things printed can never be stopped; they are like babies baptized, they have a soul from that moment, and go on forever.--_George Meredith._

~Prison.~--Young Crime's finishing school.--_Mrs. Balfour._

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.--_Beecher._

~Procrastination.~--Indulge in procrastination, and in time you will come to this, that because a thing ought to be done, therefore you can't do it.--_Charles Buxton._

The man who procrastinates struggles with ruin.--_Hesiod._

There is, by God's grace, an immeasurable distance between late and too late.--_Madame Swetchine._

~Prodigality.~--This is a vice too brave and costly to be kept and maintained at any easy rate; it must have large pensions, and be fed with both hands, though the man who feeds it starve for his pains.--_Dr. South._

When I see a young profligate squandering his fortune in bagnios, or at the gaming-table, I cannot help looking on him as hastening his own death, and in a manner digging his own grave.--_Goldsmith._

The gains of prodigals are like fig-trees growing on a precipice: for these, none are better but kites and crows; for those, only harlots and flatterers.--_Socrates._

~Progress.~--All that is human must retrograde if it do not advance.--_Gibbon._

What matters it? say some, a little more knowledge for man, a little more liberty, a little more general development. Life is so short! He is a being so limited! But it is precisely because his days are few, and he cannot attain to all, that a little more culture is of importance to him. The ignorance in which God leaves man is divine; the ignorance in which man leaves himself is a crime and a shame.--_X. Doudan._

Revolutions never go backwards.--_Emerson._

What pains and tears the slightest steps of man's progress have cost! Every hair-breadth forward has been in the agony of some soul, and humanity has reached blessing after blessing of all its vast achievement of good with bleeding feet.--_Bartol._

Progress is lame.--_St. Bueve._

We know what a masquerade all development is, and what effective shapes may be disguised in helpless embryos. In fact, the world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome dubious eggs called possibilities.--_George Eliot._

The pathway of progress will still, as of old, bear the traces of martyrdom, but the advance is inevitable.--_G. H. Lewes._

Nations are educated through suffering, mankind is purified through sorrow. The power of creating obstacles to progress is human and partial. Omnipotence is with the ages.--_Mazzini._

Every age has its problem, by solving which, humanity is helped forward.--_Heinrich Heine._

Men of great genius and large heart sow the seeds of a new degree of progress in the world, but they bear fruit only after many years.--_Mazzini._

It is curious to note the old sea-margins of human thought. Each subsiding century reveals some new mystery; we build where monsters used to hide themselves.--_Longfellow._

The activity of to-day and the assurance of to-morrow.--_Emerson._

The moral law of the universe is progress. Every generation that passes idly over the earth without adding to that progress by one degree remains uninscribed upon the register of humanity, and the succeeding generation tramples its ashes as dust.--_Mazzini._

A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday. As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes to-day.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Promise.~--Promises hold men faster than benefits: hope is a cable and gratitude a thread.--_J. Petit Senn._

~Proof.~--In the eyes of a wise judge proofs by reasoning are of more value than witnesses.--_Cicero._

Give me the ocular proof; make me see't; or at the least, so prove it, that the probation bear no hinge, no loop, to hang a doubt upon.--_Shakespeare._

~Prosperity.~--Prosperity makes some friends and many enemies.--_Vauvenargues._

That fortitude which has encountered no dangers, that prudence which has surmounted no difficulties, that integrity which has been attacked by no temptation, can at best be considered but as gold not yet brought to the test, of which therefore the true value cannot be assigned.--_Johnson._

Alas for the fate of men! Even in the midst of the highest prosperity a shadow may overturn them; but if they be in adverse fortune a moistened sponge can blot out the picture.--_AEschylus._

Prosperity lets go the bridle.--_George Herbert._

~Proverbs.~--Proverbs are somewhat analogous to those medical formulas which, being in frequent use, are kept ready made up in the chemists' shops, and which often save the framing of a distinct prescription.--_Bishop Whately._

The study of proverbs may be more instructive and comprehensive than the most elaborate scheme of philosophy.--_Motherwell._

The proverbial wisdom of the populace in the street, on the roads, and in the markets, instructs the ear of him who studies man more fully than a thousand rules ostentatiously displayed.--_Lavater._

~Prudence.~--There is no amount of praise which is not heaped on prudence; yet there is not the most insignificant event of which it can make us sure.--_Rochefoucauld._

Too many, through want of prudence, are golden apprentices, silver journeymen, and copper masters.--_Whitfield._

Men of sense often learn from their enemies. Prudence is the best safeguard. This principle cannot be learned from a friend, but an enemy extorts it immediately. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war. And this lesson saves their children, their homes, and their properties.--_Aristophanes._

~Punctuality.~--The most indispensable qualification of a cook is punctuality. The same must be said of guests.--_Brillat Savarin._

Punctuality is the stern virtue of men of business, and the graceful courtesy of princes.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Punishment.~--One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.--_Juvenal._

It is as expedient that a wicked man be punished as that a sick man be cured by a physician; for all chastisement is a kind of medicine.--_Plato._

Punishment is lame, but it comes.--_George Herbert._

If punishment makes not the will supple it hardens the offender.--_Locke._

Don't let us rejoice in punishment, even when the hand of God alone inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches just saved from shipwreck: can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-passenger swallowed by the waves?--_George Eliot._

The work of eradicating crimes is not by making punishment familiar, but formidable.--_Goldsmith._

The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.--_Cato._

The best of us being unfit to die, what an inexpressible absurdity to put the worst to death!--_Hawthorne._

~Puns.~--I have very little to say about puns; they are in very bad repute, and so they _ought_ to be. The wit of language is so miserably inferior to the wit of ideas, that it is very deservedly driven out of good company. Sometimes, indeed, a pun makes its appearance which seems for a moment to redeem its species; but we must not be deceived by them: it is a radically bad race of wit.--_Sydney Smith._

Conceits arising from the use of words that agree in sound but differ in sense.--_Addison._

~Purposes.~--Man proposes, but God disposes.--_Thomas a Kempis._

A man's heart deviseth his way; but the Lord directeth his steps.--_Bible._

It is better by a noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils which we anticipate, than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what may happen.--_Herodotus._

Purposes, like eggs, unless they be hatched into action, will run into decay.--_Smiles._

~Pursuit.~--The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain.--_Longfellow._

The fruit that can fall without shaking, indeed is too mellow for me.--_Lady Montagu._

Q.

~Quacks.~--Pettifoggers in law and empirics in medicine have held from time immemorial the fee simple of a vast estate, subject to no alienation, diminution, revolution, nor tax--the folly and ignorance of mankind.--_Colton._

Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men.--_Thoreau._

~Qualities.~--Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.--_Goethe._

~Quarrels.~--Coarse kindness is, at least, better than coarse anger; and in all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of its dullness.--_George Eliot._

The quarrels of lovers are like summer storms. Everything is more beautiful when they have passed.--_Mme. Necker._

~Questions.~--There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can, in this state, receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? And, since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?--_Johnson._

~Quotation.~--In quoting of books, quote such authors as are usually read; others you may read for your own satisfaction, but not name them.--_Selden._

If these little sparks of holy fire which I have thus heaped up together do not give life to your prepared and already enkindled spirit, yet they will sometimes help to entertain a thought, to actuate a passion, to employ and hallow a fancy.--_Jeremy Taylor._

If the grain were separated from the chaff which fills the works of our National Poets, what is truly valuable would be to what is useless in the proportion of a mole-hill to a mountain.--_Burke._

It is the beauty and independent worth of the citations, far more than their appropriateness, which have made Johnson's Dictionary popular even as a reading-book.--_Coleridge._

Ruin half an author's graces by plucking bon-mots from their places.--_Hannah More._

I take memorandums of the schools.--_Swift._

The obscurest sayings of the truly great are often those which contain the germ of the profoundest and most useful truths.--_Mazzini._

To select well among old things is almost equal to inventing new ones.--_Trublet._

Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have neither time nor means to get more. Let every bookworm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it.--_Coleridge._

A couplet of verse, a period of prose, may cling to the rock of ages as a shell that survives a deluge.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Selected thoughts depend for their flavor upon the terseness of their expression, for thoughts are grains of sugar, or salt, that must be melted in a drop of water.--_J. Petit Senn._

As people read nothing in these days that is more than forty-eight hours old, I am daily admonished that allusions, the most obvious, to anything in the rear of our own times need explanation.--_De Quincey._

R.

~Rain.~--Clouds dissolved the thirsty ground supply.--_Roscommon._

The kind refresher of the summer heats.--_Thomson._

Vexed sailors curse the rain for which poor shepherds prayed in vain.--_Waller._

The spongy clouds are filled with gathering rain.--_Dryden._

~Rainbow.~--That smiling daughter of the storm.--_Colton._

Born of the shower, and colored by the sun.--_J. C. Prince._

God's glowing covenant.--_Hosea Ballou._

~Rank.~--If it were ever allowable to forget what is due to superiority of rank, it would be when the privileged themselves remember it.--_Madame Swetchine._

I weigh the man, not his title; 'tis not the king's stamp can make the metal better.--_Wycherley._

Of the king's creation you may be; but he who makes a count ne'er made a man.--_Southerne._

~Rashness.~--Rashness and haste make all things insecure.--_Denham._

We may outrun by violent swiftness that which we run at, and lose by overrunning.--_Shakespeare._

~Reading.~--Read, and refine your appetite; learn to live upon instruction; feast your mind and mortify your flesh; read, and take your nourishment in at your eyes, shut up your mouth, and chew the cud of understanding.--_Congreve._

Deep versed in books, but shallow in himself.--_Milton._

The love of reading enables a man to exchange the wearisome hours of life, which come to every one, for hours of delight.--_Montesquieu._

There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy, who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him. He changed his mind, and went to the oars.--_Macaulay._

Exceedingly well read and profited in strange concealments.--_Shakespeare._

The reader, who would follow a close reasoner to the summit of the absolute principle of any one important subject, has chosen a chamois-hunter for his guide. He cannot carry us on his shoulders; we must strain our sinews, as he has strained his; and make firm footing on the smooth rock for ourselves, by the blood of toil from our own feet.--_Coleridge._

~Reason.~--Reason lies between the spur and the bridle.--_George Herbert._

Many are destined to reason wrongly; others not to reason at all; and others to persecute those who do reason.--_Voltaire._

If reasons were as plenty as blackberries I would give no man a reason upon compulsion.--_Shakespeare._

We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities.--_Bolingbroke._

I do not call reason that brutal reason which crushes with its weight what is holy and sacred; that malignant reason which delights in the errors it succeeds in discovering; that unfeeling and scornful reason which insults credulity.--_Joubert._

I have no other but a woman's reason: I think him so, because I think him so.--_Shakespeare._

Reason 's progressive; instinct is complete: swift instinct leaps; slow reason feebly climbs.--_Young._

Faith evermore looks upward and descries objects remote; but reason can discover things only near,--sees nothing that's above her.--_Quarles._

How can finite grasp infinity?--_Dryden._

Let us not dream that reason can ever be popular. Passions, emotions, may be made popular, but reason remains ever the property of the few.--_Goethe._

Reason is, so to speak, the police of the kingdom of art, seeking only to preserve order. In life itself a cold arithmetician who adds up our follies. Sometimes, alas! only the accountant in bankruptcy of a broken heart.--_Heinrich Heine._

Sure He that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and godlike reason to rust in us unused.--_Shakespeare._

Reason may cure illusions but not suffering.--_Alfred de Musset._

~Reciprocity.~--There is one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life, that word is _reciprocity_. What you do not wish done to yourself, do not do to others.--_Confucius._

~Reconciliation.~--It is much safer to reconcile an enemy than to conquer him; victory may deprive him of his poison, but reconciliation of his will.--_Owen Feltham._

~Rectitude.~--The great high-road of human welfare lies along the highway of steadfast well-doing, and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful.--_Samuel Smiles._

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.--_Thoreau._

No man can do right unless he is good, wise, and strong. What wonder we fail?--_Charles Buxton._

~Refinement.~--Refinement that carries us away from our fellow-men is not God's refinement.--_Beecher._

Refinement is the lifting of one's self upwards from the merely sensual, the effort of the soul to etherealize the common wants and uses of life.--_Beecher._

~Reflection.~--We are told, "Let not the sun go down on your wrath." This, of course, is best; but, as it generally does, I would add, never act or write till it has done so. This rule has saved me from many an act of folly. It is wonderful what a different view we take of the same event four-and-twenty hours after it has happened.--_Sydney Smith._

~Reform.~--We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter we stand by the old--reformers in the morning, conservatives at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism is negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth.--_Emerson._

Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.--_Milton._

Conscious remorse and anguish must be felt, to curb desire, to break the stubborn will, and work a second nature in the soul.--_Rowe._

They say best men are moulded out of faults, and, for the most, become much more the better for being a little bad!--_Shakespeare._

~Regret.~--Why is it that a blessing only when it is lost cuts as deep into the heart as a sharp diamond? Why must we first weep before we can love so deeply that our hearts ache?--_Richter._

~Religion.~--Natural religion supplies still all the facts which are disguised under the dogma of popular creeds. The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals.--_Emerson._

I endeavor in vain to give my parishioners more cheerful ideas of religion; to teach them that God is not a jealous, childish, merciless tyrant; that He is best served by a regular tenor of good actions, not by bad singing, ill-composed prayers, and eternal apprehensions. But the luxury of false religion is to be unhappy!--_Sydney Smith._

Nowhere would there be consolation if religion were not.--_Jacobi._

Monopolies are just as injurious to religion as to trade. With competition religions preserve their strength, but they will never again flourish in their original glory until religious freedom, or, in other words, free trade among the gods, is introduced.--_Heinrich Heine._

A religion giving dark views of God, and infusing superstitious fear of innocent enjoyment, instead of aiding sober habits, will, by making men abject and sad, impair their moral force, and prepare them for intemperance as a refuge from depression or despair.--_Channing._

Religion is the hospital of the souls that the world has wounded.--_J. Petit Senn._

Ah! what a divine religion might be found out if charity were really made the principle of it instead of faith.--_Shelley._

The ship retains her anchorage yet drifts with a certain range, subject to wind and tide. So we have for an anchorage the cardinal truths of the gospel.--_Gladstone._

The best religion is the most tolerant.--_Emile de Girardin._

~Remembrance.~--The greatest comfort of my old age, and that which gives me the highest satisfaction, is the pleasing remembrance of the many benefits and friendly offices I have done to others.--_Cato._

Pleasure is the flower that fades; remembrance is the lasting perfume.--_Boufflers._

~Remorse.~--Remorse is the punishment of crime; repentance its expiation. The former appertains to a tormented conscience; the latter to a soul changed for the better.--_Joubert._

Remorse sleeps in the atmosphere of prosperity.--_Rousseau._

Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles. Infected minds to their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.--_Shakespeare._

Truth severe, by fairy fiction drest.--_Gray._

~Repartee.~--The impromptu reply is precisely the touchstone of the man of wit.--_Moliere._

~Repentance.~---Repentance clothes in grass and flowers the grave in which the past is laid.--_Sterling._

He repents on thorns that sleeps in beds of roses.--_Quarles._

Beholding heaven, and feeling hell.--_Moore._

Is it not in accordance with divine order that every mortal is thrown into that situation where his hidden evils can be brought forth to his own view, that he may know them, acknowledge them, struggle against them, and put them away?--_Anna Cora Ritchie._

Repentance is second innocence.--_De Bonald._

~Repose.~--Repose is agreeable to the human mind; and decision is repose. A man has made up his opinions; he does not choose to be disturbed; and he is much more thankful to the man who confirms him in his errors, and leaves him alone, than he is to the man who refutes him, or who instructs him at the expense of his tranquillity.--_Sydney Smith._

Rest is the sweet sauce of labor.--_Plutarch._

~Reproach.~--Few love to hear the sins they love to act.--_Shakespeare._

The silent upbraiding of the eye is the very poetry of reproach; it speaks at once to the imagination.--_Mrs. Balfour._

~Republic.~--Though I admire republican principles in theory, yet I am afraid the practice may be too perfect for human nature. We tried a republic last century and it failed. Let our enemies try next. I hate political experiments.--_Walpole._

The same fact that Boccaccio offers in support of religion, might be adduced in behalf of a republic: "It exists in spite of its ministers."--_Heinrich Heine._

At twenty, every one is republican.--_Lamartine._

~Reputation.~--Reputation is one of the prizes for which men contend: it is, as Mr. Burke calls it, "the cheap defence and ornament of nations, and the nurse of manly exertions;" it produces more labor and more talent then twice the wealth of a country could ever rear up. It is the coin of genius; and it is the imperious duty of every man to bestow it with the most scrupulous justice and the wisest economy.--_Sydney Smith._

An eminent reputation is as dangerous as a bad one.--_Tacitus._

Reputation is but the synonym of popularity; dependent on suffrage, to be increased or diminished at the will of the voters.--_Washington Allston._

My name and memory I leave to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and to the next age.--_Bacon._

The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket.--_Johnson._

One may be better than his reputation or his conduct, but never better than his principles.--_Latena._

~Request.~--No music is so charming to my ear as the requests of my friends, and the supplications of those in want of my assistance.--_Caesar._

He who goes round about in his requests wants commonly more than he chooses to appear to want.--_Lavater._

~Resignation.~--O Lord, I do most cheerfully commit all unto Thee.--_Fenelon._

Let God do with me what He will, anything He will; and, whatever it be, it will be either heaven itself, or some beginning of it.--_Mountford._

A man that fortune's buffets and rewards has ta'en with equal thanks.--_Shakespeare._

Trust in God, as Moses did, let the way be ever so dark; and it shall come to pass that your life at last shall surpass even your longing. Not, it may be, in the line of that longing, that shall be as it pleaseth God; but the glory is as sure as the grace, and the most ancient heavens are not more sure than that.--_Robert Collyer._

Vulgar minds refuse to crouch beneath their load; the brave bear theirs without repining.--_Thomson._

"My will, not thine, be done," turned Paradise into a desert. "Thy will, not mine, be done," turned the desert into a paradise, and made Gethsemane the gate of heaven.--_Pressense._

Resignation is the courage of Christian sorrow.--_Dr. Vinet._

~Responsibility.~--Responsibility educates.--_Wendell Phillips._

~Restlessness.~--The mind is found most acute and most uneasy in the morning. Uneasiness is, indeed, a species of sagacity--a passive sagacity. Fools are never uneasy.--_Goethe._

Always driven towards new shores, or carried hence without hope of return, shall we never, on the ocean of age cast anchor for even a day?--_Lamartine._

~Retribution.~--Nemesis is lame, but she is of colossal stature, like the gods; and sometimes, while her sword is not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her huge left arm and grasps her victim. The mighty hand is invisible, but the victim totters under the dire clutch.--_George Eliot._

"One soweth and another reapeth" is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.--_George Eliot._

~Revenge.~--Revenge at first, though sweet, bitter ere long back on itself recoils.--_Milton._

Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual.--_Colton._

There are some professed Christians who would gladly burn their enemies, but yet who forgive them merely because it is heaping coals of fire on their heads.--_F. A. Durivage._

~Revery.~--In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts bring sad thoughts to the mind.--_Wordsworth._

~Revolution.~--The working of revolutions, therefore, misleads me no more; it is as necessary to our race as its waves to the stream, that it may not be a stagnant marsh. Ever renewed in its forms, the genius of humanity blossoms.--_Herder._

Great revolutions are the work rather of principles than of bayonets, and are achieved first in the moral, and afterwards in the material sphere.--_Mazzini._

All experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.--_Jefferson._

Nothing has ever remained of any revolution hut what was ripe in the conscience of the masses.--_Ledru Rollin._

Revolution is the larva of civilization.--_Victor Hugo._

We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary! The violence of these outrages will always lie proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of the people: and the ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the oppression and degradation under which they have been accustomed to live.--_Macaulay._

Let them call it mischief; when it's past and prospered, 't will be virtue.--_Ben Jonson._

~Rhetoric.~--In composition, it is the art of putting ideas together in graceful and accurate prose; in speaking, it is the art of delivering ideas with propriety, elegance, and force; or, in other words, it is the science of oratory.--_Locke._

Rhetoric without logic is like a tree with leaves and blossoms, but no root; yet more are taken with rhetoric than logic, because they are caught with a free expression, when they understand not reason.--_Selden._

The florid, elevated, and figurative way is for the passions; for love and hatred, fear and anger, are begotten in the soul by showing their objects out of their true proportion, either greater than the life, or less; but instruction is to be given by showing them what they naturally are. A man is to cheated into passion, but reasoned into truth.--_Dryden._

All the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment.--_Locke._

Rhetoric is very good, or stark naught; there's no medium in rhetoric.--_Selden._

~Riches.~--The shortest road to riches lies through contempt of riches.--_Seneca._

One cause, which is not always observed, of the insufficiency of riches, is that they very seldom make their owner rich.--_Johnson._

Of all the riches that we hug, of all the pleasures we enjoy, we can carry no more out of this world than out of a dream.--_Bonnell._

If the search for riches were sure to be successful, though I should become a groom with a whip in my hand to get them, I will do so. As the search may not be successful, I will follow after that which I love.--_Confucius._

I have a rich neighbor that is always so busy that he has no leisure to laugh; the whole business of his life is to get money, more money, that he may still get more. He is still drudging, saying what Solomon says, "The diligent hand maketh rich." And it is true, indeed; but he considers not that it is not in the power of riches to make a man happy; for it was wisely said by a man of great observation that "there be as many miseries beyond riches as on this side of them."--_Izaak Walton._

Riches, though they may reward virtues, yet they cannot cause them; he is much more noble who deserves a benefit, than he who bestows one.--_Owen Feltham._

In these times gain is not only a matter of greed, but of ambition.--_Joubert._

~Ridicule.~--Some men are, in regard to ridicule, like tin-roofed buildings in regard to hail: all that hits them bounds rattling off, not a stone goes through.--_Beecher._

~Rogues.~--Rogues are always found out in some way. Whoever is a wolf will act as a wolf; that is the most certain of all things.--_La Fontaine._

Many a man would have turned rogue if he knew how.--_Hazlitt._

~Ruin.~--To be ruined your own way is some comfort. When so many people would ruin us, it is a triumph over the villany of the world to be ruined after one's own pattern.--_Douglas Jerrold._

S.

~Sacrifice.~--You cannot win without sacrifice.--_Charles Buxton._

What you most repent of is a lasting sacrifice made under an impulse of good-nature. The good-nature goes, the sacrifice sticks.--_Charles Buxton._

~Sadness.~--Take my word for it, the saddest thing under the sky is a soul incapable of sadness.--_Countess de Gasparin._

Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.--_Thoreau._

~Salary.~--Other rules vary; this is the only one you will find without exception: That in this world the salary or reward is always in the inverse ratio of the duties performed.--_Sydney Smith._

~Sarcasm.~--A true sarcasm is like a sword-stick--it appears, at first sight, to be much more innocent than it really is, till, all of a sudden, there leaps something out of it--sharp and deadly and incisive--which makes you tremble and recoil.--_Sydney Smith._

~Satire.~--To lash the vices of a guilty age.--_Churchill._

Thou shining supplement of public laws!--_Young._

By satire kept in awe, shrink from ridicule, though not from law.--_Byron._

When dunces are satiric I take it for a panegyric.--_Swift._

~Scandal.~--Believe that story false that ought not to be true.--_Sheridan._

Scandal has something so piquant, it is a sort of cayenne to the mind.--_Byron._

~School.~--More is learned in a public than in a private school from emulation: there is the collision of mind with mind, or the radiation of many minds pointing to one centre--_Johnson._

Let the soldier be abroad if he will; he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage abroad,--a person less imposing,--in the eyes of some, perhaps, insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad; and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array.--_Brougham._

The whining school-boy, with his satchel, and shining morning face, creeping like a snail, unwillingly to school.--_Shakespeare._

~Science.~--They may say what they like; everything is organized matter. The tree is the first link of the chain, man is the last. Men are young, the earth is old. Vegetable and animal chemistry are still in their infancy. Electricity, galvanism,--what discoveries in a few years!--_Napoleon._

Human science is uncertain guess.--_Prior._

Twin-sister of natural and revealed religion, and of heavenly birth, science will never belie her celestial origin, nor cease to sympathize with all that emanates from the same pure home. Human ignorance and prejudice may for a time seem to have divorced what God has joined together; but human ignorance and prejudice shall at length pass away, and then science and religion shall be seen blending their parti-colored rays into one beautiful bow of light, linking heaven to earth and earth to heaven.--_Prof. Hitchcock._

Science is a first rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has the worse for his patient.--_Holmes._

~Scriptures.~--The majesty of Scripture strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the Gospel has its influence on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers; with all their pomp of diction, how mean, how contemptible, are they, compared with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be merely the work of man? The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in the Gospel, the marks of whose truths are so striking and inimitable that the inventor would be a more astonishing character than the hero.--_Rousseau._

~Secrecy.~--Thou hast betrayed thy secret as a bird betrays her nest, by striving to conceal it.--_Longfellow._

Never confide your secrets to paper: it is like throwing a stone in the air, and if you know who throws the stone, you do not know where it may fall.--_Calderon._

People addicted to secrecy are so without knowing why; they are not so for cause, but for secrecy's sake.--_Hazlitt._

~Sect.~--The effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads.--_Macaulay._

All sects are different, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.--_Voltaire._

Fierce sectarianism breeds fierce latitudinarianism.--_De Quincey._

~Self-Abnegation.~--'Tis much the doctrine of the times that men should not please themselves, but deny themselves everything they take delight in; not look upon beauty, wear no good clothes, eat no good meat, etc., which seems the greatest accusation that can be upon the Maker of all good things. If they are not to be used why did God make them?--_Selden._

Self-abnegation, that rare virtue that good men preach and good women practice.--_Holmes._

~Self-Examination.~--We neither know nor judge ourselves,--others may judge, but cannot know us,--God alone judges, and knows too.--_Wilkie Collins._

It belongs to every large nature, when it is not under the immediate power of some strong unquestioning emotion, to suspect itself, and doubt the truth of its own impressions, conscious of possibilities beyond its own horizon.--_George Eliot._

There are two persons in the world we never see as they are,--one's self and one's other self.--_Arsene Houssaye._

~Selfishness.~--Our infinite obligations to God do not fill our hearts half as much as a petty uneasiness of our own; nor his infinite perfections as much as our smallest wants.--_Hannah More._

It is astonishing how well men wear when they think of no one but themselves.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Our selfishness is so robust and many-clutching that, well encouraged, it easily devours all sustenance away from our poor little scruples.--_George Eliot._

There is an ill-breeding to which, whatever our rank and nature, we are almost equally sensitive,--the ill-breeding that comes from want of consideration for others.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

~Self-Love.~--That household god, a man's own self.--_Flavel._

The greatest of all flatterers is self-love.--_Rochefoucauld._

Self-love exaggerates both our faults and our virtues.--_Goethe._

Whatever discoveries we may have made in the regions of self-love, there still remain many unknown lands.--_Rochefoucauld._

Selfishness, if but reasonably tempered with wisdom, is not such an evil trait.--_Ruffini._

A prudent consideration for Number One.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Oh, the incomparable contrivance of Nature who has ordered all things in so even a method that wherever she has been less bountiful in her gifts, there she makes it up with a larger dose of self-love, which supplies the former deficits and makes all even.--_Erasmus._

The most inhibited sin in the canon.--_Shakespeare._